


airflow

by Hitsugi_Zirkus



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, bittersweet fluff, whistling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:31:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6732376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hitsugi_Zirkus/pseuds/Hitsugi_Zirkus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was so much he wanted to say, but what Mikleo thought could encompass it all was just to let Sorey know he was here. And so, inhaling deeply, Mikleo rounded his lips and whistled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	airflow

**Author's Note:**

> Just some more fluff I thought up the other day while listening to music that had a lot of lonely-sounding whistling in it. You can tell my love for FFX came out in this, eheh.
> 
> I wrote this instead of working on my final papers, do not be me, children.

Traveling was a large part of their day-to-day lives. At first, it had been to hunt down hellions, but as the years passed, those dark creatures started to dwindle in number and they started having more time to accompany Rose during her business with the Scattered Bones. They - himself, Lailah, Edna, and Zaveid - were bound to her now, and followed her in her travels and missions, mostly to make sure she didn’t get hurt as she was adamant about accomplishing some things with her own strength.

Sometimes though, it was nice to stay in one place for a while, to surround themselves in familiar sights and sounds. More and more as a new age of peace approached, Rose and the others had taken to visiting Ladylake whenever Alisha requested if she could see them. Her affairs as a princess had steadily been keeping her more busy with the peace treaty’s enactment and her political visits to the neighboring nation. In the few times when neither Rose nor Alisha were wrapped in their work, they all decided to rendezvous in Ladylake and be in each other’s company, telling stories of their adventures, laughing in the revelry of friendship - humans and seraphim alike.

“It’s just like he wanted, isn’t it?”

Mikleo lifted his head, realizing he’d been acting as spectator to the friendly gathering on Alisha’s terrace. It wasn’t that he was feeling left out, but more that he’d been taking in the scene with a small smile, thinking exactly as Lailah had said.

She offered her own upbeat smile to him, her fingertips together. “Humans and seraphim getting along,” she continued. “It really feels like a possibility when we’re all together like this as friends.”

“Yeah,” Mikleo said. “To think Alisha used to have such difficulty seeing and hearing us - though you’d never guess it with how flustered she’s getting over Edna’s teasing.” The last word drew to mind the face of someone else in their party that was noticeably absent. Mikleo frowned. “Speaking of which, where’s Zaveid? He never passes up the opportunity for down time like this.”

Lailah’s large, beautiful eyes filled with that same question. “I wondered about that. Oh! Could it be he’s having fun without us somewhere?” Lailah looked simultaneously distressed and scandalized, palms pressed to her cheeks.

 _Whatever you’re imagining, it just sounds lewd when you say it like that_. Not that Mikleo would put the prospect of Zaveid chasing skirts anywhere past him. Clearing his throat, he offered, “I can go look for him. He can’t have wandered too far from the excitement of the city.”

“I’ll leave it to you then. Make sure he comes back, even if you have to drag him!”

 _Hopefully it won’t come to that_. Mikleo quietly slipped away in the middle of Rose animatedly telling a story and headed out into the city. He couldn’t feel Zaveid’s presence right away, so he took to strolling down some streets, looking through some typical spots like the inn or where a group of girls chatted in front of the waterwheel. The loudmouth was nowhere in sight though.

“Oh well. I guess if he needs us, he knows where we are.” Mikleo sighed. Well, it wasn’t like he was particularly worried; Zaveid could handle himself after all.

As he turned back to Alisha’s place, he started thinking up ways to quell the vocal disappointment Lailah was sure to display when a sound apart from the regular chatter and current of Ladylake twirled languidly through the air. Mikleo thought he’d mistaken the sound for the wind at first, but no, this was definitely something more musical, like a whistle. Without thinking, he ended up following it. It was an enchanting sound that almost seemed to be calling out - to him or someone else, he didn’t know, but the gentle waves seemed to be trying to fit into some deeper part of himself.

He had the opportunity to ask about it when he found the source - Zaveid, sitting up in a tree, looking as relaxed as ever and with his head tilted up toward the blue, afternoon sky. Mikleo, unable to climb, rooted himself near the base and simply stared until Zaveid seemed to notice him and open his eyes, his whistling coming to an end.

“What were you doing just now?”

The peaceful expression on Zaveid’s face automatically gave way for his usual cocky grin. “What? You ain’t ever hear of a little whistling?”

Huffing through his nose - _why did I expect an actual answer?_ \- Mikleo said, “I _know_ what whistling is. But what you did just now… It sounded different somehow. It’s how I found you.”

“Hmm, that? You can say it’s a bit of a trick you pick up as a wind seraph,” Zaveid said, crossing his arms proudly over his bare chest.

“So is it like a way for you to call each other?” Mikleo asked, thinking of that tugging sensation in his chest when he’d heard the sound. It was hard to believe he’d heard such a drawing sound from Zaveid in the first place.

Zaveid rubbed a finger against his chin, thinking. “It could be, but also not. You could say it’s also our way of signalling each other and reassuring each other, like saying ‘hey, I’m right here’! It’s pretty all-purpose.”

“I see.” Intrigued, Mikleo let the information sink in. He didn’t necessarily have the opportunity to formally study seraphs of other elements like this before. He kind of took the artes the others in Elysia wielded for granted. But now he found the differences between him and the others fascinating. On that note, it wouldn’t be ridiculous at all for wind seraphim to have a unique way of communicating like whistling - sound did travel through the air after all. Mikleo wondered if manipulating sound wasn’t an impossibility for wind seraphim to do then - that would explain why Zaveid’s whistling had such an ethereal pull and tone to it--

“Hey hey hey, I see that look on your face, you’re going all ‘Analytical Scientist’ right now, aren’t ya?” Zaveid shook his head, then finally jumped down from the tree, shaking off some leaves from his hair. He flicked one at Mikleo. “Look, if you’re that curious about it, how about you try it for yourself without that head mumbo-jumbo and see what happens?”

Brushing the leaf off his head, Mikleo huffed, “What, just whistling?”

“Yeah, go for it. You might be surprised at how it makes the others around you feel, knowin’ you’re callin' out to them.”

 _That was...actually a pretty touching thing to say_ . Mikleo’s surprise gave way to another kind of curiosity. “Who were _you_ calling out to then, Zaveid?” He didn’t think anything of it in asking, but at the flat silence Zaveid gave in response, Mikleo wondered if he’d accidentally stepped into personal territory. After all, even though Mikleo was the one to follow that sound, that whistle might not have been for his ears - why else would Zaveid go out of his way to do this away from the rest of them?

 _Maybe I interrupted something_. Just as Mikleo was starting to feel bad, Zaveid clapped his hand right on top of his head and started roughly tousling his hair.

“I was hoping one the ladies would hear and come and get me, but it looks like I snagged myself a Mickey boy instead~”

“Ugh!” Mikleo swatted him away. “Would you _stop_ calling be weird names? Geez, Lailah let me get you since everyone is already with Alisha.”

One mention of their female friends, and Zaveid was paying full attention, his grin even wider than before. “Well, why didn’t ya just _say_ so? That’s some vital information you kept from me!” He tapped Mikleo’s shoulder urgently. “Come on, it’d be bad manners to make ladies wait!”

 _You already_ did _make them wait_. But whatever, Mikleo had done his job, so there was nothing to do but shuffle back over to Alisha’s house. Even that felt like it would be a long trek though with Zaveid jabbering away.

“Hey, I meant it though,” was the first thing he said, nudging his elbow into Mikleo’s arm, “you should give the whistling a try. The wind can travel the distance across all kinds of spaces! That’s why it’s the element of communication. So whatever you want to say, you can bet the wind will be a good messenger for ya.”

It felt a bit like Zaveid was harping on the idea, which annoyed Mikleo. But then he thought about it properly: the prospect of doing something that could travel the distance of all sorts of spaces - physical distance, maybe even the distance of time - it sparked his interest, the idea making his annoyed scowl soften.

Maybe...he would give it a try. And he knew just where he wanted to do it.

Mikleo stared at Zaveid. “You’re awfully educational at the most unexpected times.”

“What’s that~? You should call me Teach then!”

“Not a chance.” He relished in the offended look on Zaveid’s face.

* * *

Mikleo knew his way through the ruins by heart now - every turn, every layout of the levels, every hidden wall. The air was a lot more breathable now with the eradication of the last few hellions that had been running around.

But everything was safe now - the ruins, and its secret. The barrier he’d cast himself had safeguarded the entrance from any and all malevolent creatures so that they couldn’t go after the most precious chance Glenwood had at peace. The walk ended up being pretty uneventful because of that, but it gave him the chance to simply be able to appreciate traversing through the ruins’ corridors of history.

In between levels, the weight of ten years pressed on Mikleo’s shoulders and crawled down on his back. A decade was truly nothing in the grand scope of a seraph’s lifespan, but it was time enough for him to notice the changes of his life, and of the world that kept on spinning. He himself had barely undergone any physical change, save for his hair that had gotten just a little bit longer, the strands tickling the nape of his neck.

Even if Mikleo’s body hadn’t felt the flow of the years though, his heart had, and would continue to for however long Sorey slept. For a while now, he’d been thinking about how to bridge that passage of time as it grew longer, and the Sorey he’d once known at that time getting a little farther away from him - even if he hadn’t realized it properly yet, he felt that glimmer of hope when Zaveid talked to him.

That same light of hope cascading through his veins felt like it matched the intensity of the winding line of light humming quietly in front of him when he pushed opened a pair of doors - and there he was.

The corner of Mikleo’s lips tugged up at the sight of that blue-white light, breaching past the orange swirl of the sky above and then down below into the pit where Sorey was physically sleeping. Mikleo had never gone down there himself, but he doubted that his presence would be able to go much near that bright pure bubble anyway. But he was content enough up here, sitting cross-legged near the tip of the cliff, surveying all of Sorey before him, his warmth felt even hundreds of meters above. Just being here, Mikleo felt like he was surrounded by Sorey, as if he were embracing Mikleo - his energy was all around him.

It made his face grow warm to think of such an invisible yet tangible intimacy, but thoughts like that had been entering his mind ever since that last night with Sorey under the stars.

There was...a lot he never said to Sorey. A part of him that night urged him to say something; another part still insisted that now wasn’t the right time. And so Mikleo had kept all those words and feelings inside him, trying not to let anything spill out like water cupped tightly in his hands.

But Mikleo still thought about it, about just letting Sorey know all the things that kept swimming in his heart when it came to the two of them. It wasn’t as if this were the first time he was visiting Sorey, although it had been a while. He knew it was probably irresponsible to mess with the barrier so often - but that was why, he was making this the last time. He’d let Sorey sleep properly after this, and keep trusting that he’d come back - until then, Mikleo had to do his part too in eradicating malevolence from Glenwood with the others, and in carrying out his and Sorey’s dream to explore ruins.

“There’s too much for me to see and do for me to keep coming back to the same spot like this,” Mikleo murmured absently. But how could he help it when the heart just naturally yearned for its home? And Mikleo learned years ago that his home wasn’t a place at all, not even Elysia. Always, from the beginning of their lives - it had been Sorey.

Mikleo never knew if Sorey could ever actually hear them when they talked. Each of their group had a moment to speak to him when they first found him again, but whether their words were for their own satisfaction or if they genuinely knew that Sorey could hear them, Mikleo couldn’t say. That was why he wanted to try something new now.

He had a lot of promises to keep, both to himself and to Sorey. There was so much he wanted to say, but what Mikleo thought could encompass it all was just to let Sorey know he was here. And so, inhaling deeply, Mikleo rounded his lips and whistled out. He was no wind seraph, but his whistle was high-pitched and fluid, echoing like ocean waves across the rocky expanse and flow of light. He whistled once then twice, listening to the way the sound spilled before him and towards Sorey. 

At the end of it, his cheeks felt flush - whether it was from embarrassment or accomplishment, he wasn't sure. Either way, there was a small smile on his lips, his chest feeling lighter than before. Had it really worked? Did he really say all the things he wanted Sorey to know? Whatever had ended up being conveyed by his whistles, Mikleo was sure that the distance between him and Sorey was bridged again, and that Sorey had received his feelings. That was what the feeling in his chest told him. 

Satisfied, Mikleo rose up and, after dusting himself off, decided it was time to head back. They were only staying at Ladylake for a few days, but then it was off to accompany Rose on another mission. Mikleo could luckily just transport himself back into Rose's body, so he wouldn't be traveling long at all - still, it was a beautiful night last time he checked; he wanted to gaze at the stars for a moment before transporting away. 

"I'll see you, Sorey. Try to come back before I end up exploring all the world's ruins without you, okay?" He said it teasingly, and this time, he wasn't scared if his words might become a reality. Because he and Sorey were bridged again, and no kind of distance would keep them away. He was sure of it. 

A pulsing, warm sound reached his ears. Mikleo's hands froze on the stone, his eyes wide when he looked back to Sorey. 

The light was usually thin, like lightening, and humming quietly like the even breaths of someone sleeping (maybe those breaths belonged to Sorey). But the light was now twinkling and swaying just slightly, the brilliant shine pulsing when the warm sound resonated out from it again.

Reaching out to Mikleo - was a whistle.

Mikleo let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. As soon as he did though, tears he couldn't even try to stop pooled out from his eyes, streaking messily down his cheeks. He let out a small laugh of sheer disbelief, holding onto the door for support when Sorey whistled to him again. Then Mikleo genuinely was smiling, and he tried to whistle back, but his delighted laughter bubbled out instead. Sorey's whistle was melodic, changing pitch like he was teasing Mikleo for crying. 

"You always need the last word, huh?" he said. "Showoff."

After a few moments, the playful light stopped twinkling, and the whistle returned to a gentle hum. Sorey was sleeping again, but what part of himself had just called out to Mikleo in the first place? His heart? His soul? Whatever the case, Mikleo was overflowing with relief and happiness, his smile unable to leave his face even when his tears stopped. Eventually he finally did leave, closing the door to that warm light that Mikleo felt long after he left the ruins.

No matter where or when, Mikleo would always feel this warmth, because Sorey's feelings had reached Mikleo too.

 

 

An ethereal whistle echoed out into the starry night sky.

 _I'm here. I'll be waiting for you_.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly the official art where Mikleo is the only one looking back at Sorey's line of light kills me every day. 
> 
> As for who Zaveid was whistling to, I'll leave that up to you ;) 
> 
> Twitter, @fuwajellyfish  
> Tumblr, clears-jellyfish-dress


End file.
